"What is the status of our comrades?" ask Shino as he rolled his left shoulder, trying to get feeling back in it after their battle.
"Everyone is in the healing trance, just like Iruka showed me. Their injuries should be healed in a few hours, if I did it right. Ino, Heero, and Naruto are the ones I'm really worried about though," said the pink haired kunoichi, staring at her handiwork. Most of the others had easily agreed to be healed, and with the revelation that Shino had used his bugs to cushion him, and thus didn't require it and could remain on guard with Shino and Sakura, even Kiba, the most recalcitrant, had said yes. Mind, having Sakura poke him in the side and cause him to nearly fall over in pain had helped.
"You did everything you could for them, right?" said Shikamaru, from where he was meditating, holding a barrier of shadows at the front of the cave they'd decided to hide in, just under a tree near their battle site with Orochimaru. Neji, once he could walk, had tried to demand they move farther on before resting, but Sakura had insisted they not move Heero too much, considering she knew his heart had been torn in half, and really, him being alive was a miracle she wasn't willing to risk.
"I've given Heero as thorough an examination as possible, and he seems fine, I've neutralized the poison in Naruto's system as well as I can, and I did the genjutsu release techniques to help Ino's mind recover. Yeah, I think that's the best I can do with my training," she admitted, and Shikamaru nodded.
"Then you can rest easy, knowing you have done all within your power to help them," said the pineapple haired boy, as he gently flowed more chakra into their cover, muffling the sounds outside, as the scene grew slightly darker.
"Then I believe it has come time to discuss our recent performance against Orochimaru," said Shino, and the other two had their expressions turn dark, as depression began to set in.
"You mean about how we utterly failed against him, despite outnumbering him?" asked Sakura, and surprisingly Shino shook his head.
"I have doubts that any other group of thirteen save the Hokage and a select group of jonin would have been able to match him as well as we were able to. Remember, while we are the best of our generation, that generation is still young. Orochimaru's experience in real combat, and in the shinobi arts are far in excess of what we could bring to bear against him," said the kikai-nin, and Sakura's expression seemed to brighten, at least a little at that explanation of events.
"Still, only Heero was able to hold him off for more than a few seconds, and I think that was down to Orochimaru restricting his chakra use to taijutsu techniques and a few summonings. If he had come at us full force, we would have been wiped out for sure," said Shikamaru, and Shino stared at him through his sunglasses.
"I do not believe that is so. We were, until his first few attacks, attempting to treat him as a threat on our level. Had he used any overt techniques, I would like to believe we would have approached him with far more caution than we did," countered Shino.
"We were overconfident, that was for sure. We took out that suna team so easily, it felt like nothing could stop us. We know better now," said Sakura finally, leaving the three in silence for some time.
"You heard what Orochimaru called Naruto, right?" asked Shikamaru at last.
"The Container, he said he was the one he was here for," answered Sakura.
"Container, there are few conditions that would require such a title be given to one so young, and only one that fits the facts of what we know of the Uzumaki heir," said Shikamaru, never opening his eyes as he sat there, and the three team leaders went back over their lessons. Mizuki, at one point, had had them studying ways to quickly increase a clan's power. One of the most direct ways was to seal something inside one of their own to make them stronger. Specifically, a Tailed Beast.
"How long have you known?" asked Shino suddenly, and Shikamaru shrugged.
"About a year and a half. During my private sessions with him and everyone else, before the Thirteen were formed, I wondered about him, and births are a matter of public record. It didn't take much digging to find the truth. What about you?" explained the Nara boy.
"I didn't realize it until recently. I had always assumed it was just some kind of Blood Limit, a power passed from parent to child like Heero's abilities. However, during our walk back with Zabuza I began to grasp how much chakra he puts into his clones. No power passed through blood would allow such a thing," answered Shino, and Sakura just sat there. She knew exactly what they were talking about, but until they brought it up, she hadn't really thought about it until this last fight. Naruto, the happy go lucky boy from school. The boisterous, completely unserious kid who was the reason they were the Thirteen in the first place, must contain one of the Tailed Beasts. And not just anyone of them either, but the strongest of all, the Kyubi no Kitsune.
"Beyond us, how many of the others do you think have figured out his secret?" asked Sakura, looking over at the ten silently sleeping bodies.
"I would rule out our elders. Those three were not in our class, and I have a suspicion that Mizuki's lesson on the Tailed Beasts was something outside the normal curriculum. Of the others, maybe three. Naruto and Heero are so used to his abilities, it is doubtful they think of them in those terms. Kiba is, to put it bluntly, not bright enough to have put the pieces together. Choji wouldn't care one way or the other, and probably hasn't thought about this too deeply. Only Ino, Sasuke, and Hinata would have both the knowledge and understanding to put it together," espoused Shino.
"No, I doubt that Sasuke and Hinata have realized it yet either. Sasuke's a jerk, always focused on himself first, everyone else last, and now that he has a Sharingan active, he'll be even more dedicated to personal advancement. As for Hinata, she's way too distant to care about Naruto. He's a clanless loser to her, the heir of one of Konoha's oldest families. No, Ino's the only one who would have any idea, and since she wasn't awake for his rage filled transformation, she won't know any better," countered Shikamaru, and the other two nodded.
"That begs the question. Should we tell any of them about this? Don't Heero and Naruto at least, deserve to know what's going on there?" asked Sakura, and that silenced them all again, as they each ran their brains over the scenarios of how the others would react. Mostly, it was as they were. Naruto, no matter what was inside him, was one of the Thirteen, their group, or pack as Kiba would say. They weren't truly close friends, Sakura couldn't tell you what Choji's favorite food was for instance, but they were comrades in arms, and that meant something to a shinobi of the Leaf.
"For now, the best course of action would be to maintain our silence, and keep an eye on Naruto. The outburst from earlier seems dangerous, but we don't know enough about his seal to understand it. Perhaps one of the jonin wo-," began Shino, and then stopped in mid word, as three forms resolved themselves out of the bush. They moved slowly, cautiously, taking in the whole of the clearing as they walked, their formation a triangle, with them facing outward and spinning to maximize their visual coverage.
"Woah, someone really did a number on this place," one of them finally said, as they reached the center of the clearing, their eyes darting everywhere, surveying the damage done to the trees and forest in the course of the fight with Orochimaru. Beside him, Shikamaru heard a kunai unsheath, but quickly reached over to place his hand in front of Shino, who seemed ready to attack the three.
"My Shadow Copse Jutsu will keep them from noticing us, unless we make an aggressive move," explained Shikamaru, and Shino, rather reluctantly, placed the kunai back in its holder, and recalled his swarm he'd been extending outward.
"You felt the chakra and killing intent, right? You think Gaara was responsible?" asked one of the forms, whose hitai could finally be seen. He was a Suna-nin, as were his compatriots, all of whom seemed rather freaked out by the sight around them.
"No, this is something else. Look, no sand at all," said the tallest and obviously oldest of the three, pointing towards some of the damage they'd done to one of the trees nearby.
"Wait? Another jinjuriki? Who would send one of those into an exam like this?" asked one of the other two, a bit of worry in his voice.
"We are," commented the third, and the second shrugged.
"Yeah, but we're doing it for a reason. Most of the villages I know of just keep them under lock and key, or promote them when they hit a certain age," retorted the second.
"It matters little. This damage, and the feeling of the chakra was obviously another jinjuriki. We should inform the Kage as soon as...as…" the eldest's words trailed off as he looked towards something out of sight of the three hiding under the trunk.
"Are you the ones responsible for this?" asked a voice, sounding almost dead to the leaf-nin, like the words of someone whose will had been destroyed by a genjutsu.
"No, we came here to investigate after defeating a few Ame-Nin for their scroll. It was like this when we got here," said the eldest, bowing his head respectfully towards the speaker.
"Pity," said the voice, and then suddenly tendrils of sand shot from where the speaker was standing, moving almost as fast as Orochimaru, and quickly grabbing the three suna-nin by the throat, lifting them off the ground, even as they struggled to pull the things off them, their gear falling to the ground at their feet, including the packs of supplies they'd been wearing.
"Gaara, no! You know we need everyone for the Plan," said a female voice, her tone both one of worry and fear.
"Yeah, we need every body we can put a hitai," said another male voice. The first speaker didn't respond though, instead walking forward. When he finally came in view, the three ninja started a bit, even Shino. The sand was coming from the gourd on the back of the red headed Suna-Nin they'd noticed back during the first exam, the only ones close to their age in the exam at all.
"You, you threw a rock at me, when I was two," began the boy, walking closer to those he was choking, the one he was talking to already slightly blue in the face.
"You, you put a rotten tomato on my plate when you made my food once," he said to the second of the three, who struggled to try and kick the smaller boy, but Gaara stayed just out of his reach, not allowing him to come close at all.
"And you tried to use a kunai on me. Ducking away into an alley before I could kill you," he told the eldest, who, as he was approached, pulled a kunai in the here and now, tossing it with all the strength he could muster towards the red headed boy. The sand reacted with lightning speed, and suddenly another tendril of the stuff came out of the gourd, smashing the offending weapon to the ground hard enough to shatter the steel it was made from.
"Yes, I believe I should kill you," Gaara said in that dead voice, raising his right hand, which somehow caused even more sand to pour forth from the gourd.
"Sand Coffin!" he cried, the first emotion he'd shown, as the sand wrapped itself fully around the genin before him, covering their bodies completely, leaving only their faces exposed.
"Gaara, no!" shouted the girl, coming into view, as expected, it was his teammate. before she could get too close, however, the third member of their team dropped beside her, grabbing her shoulders and holding her back. For their part, the three in the sand were shouting at Gaara. Not begging for their life, however. No, they were calling him a monster, telling him he was a demon, and how even if he lived to a ripe old age, no one, anywhere, would ever love him.
"Sand Burial," was the only response of Gaara to all this, clenching his raised hand into a fist, and the sand around the three clenched with it. Sakura turned away, not wanting to see this, and Shikamaru wouldn't have opened his eyes, even if the Shadow Copse jutsu didn't require him to keep them closed to maintain their hiding place. Behind his sunglasses, only Shino watched, as blood began to spill from inside those sand cocoons, as bones broke, and last gasps of air came out as one strangled cry.
"That was unnecessary, Gaara," said the older boy on his team, and Sakura finally opened her eyes to see the Sand-Nin recollecting his sand, the stuff snaking its way into the gourd, before the top part of it became a cork that sealed the stuff in again. In front of him where the remains of the boys he'd murdered, though it was hard to tell that the lumps of raw, dry meat were ever once human. Even their red blood was gone, leaving only muscles, sinew, and bone fragments in a disconcerting pile on the forest floor.
"Yeah, we already have both scrolls too. We didn't need to," began the female, only to be silenced by Gaara turning to stare at her. He said nothing, however, and just stared for a moment, before walking back into the trees, the other two glancing at each other, then at the piles, before following. Inside their hiding place, the three Leaf-Nin ground their teeth. Killing in the line of duty was one thing, but this? This was straight murder. Those boys hadn't been a threat to the three. Heck, they were from the same village.
"When we leave, we need to collect the scrolls from their packs. That leaves us with only a single Heaven scroll to find. Once we have that, I would advise all of us to make our way to the tower at the center of the Forest, with all speed," said Shino, and looking at him, and then towards the remains of the three Sand-Nin, Sakura nodded, while Shikamaru just swallowed. Being a ninja was becoming even more dangerous than they had imagined.